iFixit disassembles the MacBook Air

So it looks like SlashGear just got their first MacBook Air, although I don’t foresee Vincent taking it apart anytime soon, at least not to this extent. So instead we have the pics from the folks over at iFixit as they slowly take apart the computer.

Once you get the initial bottom cover and battery off, everything else seems to be object oriented. What I mean by that is that there is the motherboard, but from there on, everything else is broken down into modules based on what they do, and then they all just connect to the motherboard.

So, the motherboard being so small isn’t really that much of an accomplishment since you could shrink any motherboard to a similar size if you stripped everything but the processor, memory, and connectors for all the other stuff off of it. There’s an RF module, an Audio Module (it drives, and has one, of the speakers on it, and also is wired over to the headphone jack), there’s a power module, a touchpad module, and then the module that connects the screen. The graphics are still on the motherboard, but like I said, just about everything else is offloaded.

The upsides are that the battery isn’t really all that hard to replace, just remove 19 screws (10 from the case, 9 from the battery itself) and unplug it. Also, the HDD is fairly easy to get to as well, and it seems to be the same HDD as the 80GB iPod Classic.